But the problem was: there were none. The best she could do on the route they were on was some sort of eighteenth-century recreation village thing, a museum full of hats, and, according to Google, the world’s largest statue of a raccoon. And it wasn’t a comfort when that last one got anokayout of him.
Because once they were pulling into a makeshift parking lot in front of this incredible monument to man’s ability to sculpt large rodents, she realized. He wasn’t supposed to agree with this. This wasn’t normal for him. He’d even stressed at the start of the trip: no sightseeing.
She wasn’t even sure why she’d thought it was a good idea.
It’s like something is melting my brain, she thought as she staggered out of the car and toward her new raccoon god. Twenty feet tall, painted thickly in black and white, with tiny paws reaching for the sky. She almost sank to her knees.Please, oh great raccoon one, help me figure outwhat is going on here, she imagined herself saying. But the only answer she got was the giggling of two women at a picnic table nearby, sharing sandwiches and kisses.
Adorable, to her heart.
A bad influence, to her brain.
Now she was thinking about romance instead of road trip nonsense. And even more so when she glanced back at the truck and saw him through the already slowly dying light. Most of her expecting him to be tapping his watch, because it was six now and it took two hours to get to Paramus, New Jersey. But he wasn’t. His head was bowed, as if he were praying to some strange god, too.
It made her breath catch to see it.
Then again when she grasped what he was actually doing.
He was writing. And not on his laptop, but in the same empty notebook he’d used to print the rules. Those neatly, carefully lined-up rules, in handwriting she’d only ever seen once before that: when he’d been ahead of her in the line at student accommodations, and she’d watched him fill out a form.
That was his limit for longhand.
Like longhand was too sloppy and free for him to let his imagination anywhere near it. And yet somehow, she knew that was what he was doing. There was something about it, something familiar. The way she used to feel, before she realized writing was just a hobby and helping people was her calling.
My love is like a fever, she thought, as she watched his hand fly over the page. Saw him lean so close to his own words he could have kissed them, squinting without hisglasses, uncaring that they weren’t there. An entire page filled up in the blink of an eye, so furiously scrawled she could see whole sentences had slanted right out of the lines.
Caleb Miller, she thought.Line crosser.
Then started toward the truck. And stopped. Started again. And stopped.
Even when she got there, her hand held in the air just above the door handle. Half of her fearing theclunkwould make him stop, half of her fearing it wouldn’t. A vow already in her head to not actually look at whatever was bursting out of him so abruptly, so fiercely.
She needn’t have worried however.
He looked up and saw her, and practically scrambled it away. Like she’d caught him red-handed, doing something terrible to something utterly obscene. The only thing she got a glimpse of was the title, as he finished shoving it back into the glove compartment.
Maybe It Could Be, she thought it said.
Then refused to look again to check.
She fixed her eyes on the road he started back onto, that deep dusk of an endlessly empty highway, lit only by the occasional sign. And told herself that this would have to be enough of a distraction. This would lull him back to normality. But even after five miles, she could tell it hadn’t.
She could feel him shifting beside her. The air stirred every time he did it.
As if he was actually uncomfortable, or even flustered.
Which was probably why he took the shortcut he did, through the sprawling forest they were supposed todrive around. “I’ve taken this trail before,” he said. But she was pretty sure he hadn’t. And then after thirty minutes of driving and dwindling dirt paths, she wasdefinitelysure he hadn’t.
It’ll be fine, she told herself as the truck bounced and rumbled and screeched over loose stones and tree roots.He always knows what he’s doing.He always knows where he is. Just as he eased the car to a stop and carefully shut off the engine, and both of them watched the headlights dim down to nothing until they were sat there in the pitch black.
“I have no idea where I am,” he said.
At which point, it felt okay to scream.
Fourteen
She spent a good half hour trying to find a signal with her phone. But really she knew it wasn’t a signal she was looking for. It was a way out of being too near to him. Andespeciallywhen he was still being incredibly soft with her. She imagined he had gotten out of the truck to see if he could figure out where they were.
Instead he came back with a flask of coffee.
